Conflict does all sorts of damage. Though sometimes necessary ... most times there are better alternatives.
Conflict causes immediate value destruction and constrains the future for years ... generations.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

I have done some work in the Horn of Africa ... and in various parts of Somalia. During some of this work, I was fortunate to meet Michael Van Notton, a Dutch national, married to a Somali, and a student of Somali law and its culture and traditions. I was also fortunate to have to do some of my work in Somaliland ... that has functioned independent of Somalia (with capital in Mogadishu) for more than a decade, though as yet, not (as I understand the situation) formally recognised as an independent nation by anyone.

An interview today on the PBS Newshour helps to explain why the violence goes on and on and on. In the interview there was a Somali perspective and a US perspective ... and it was fairly clear that there was little or no "acceptance" of the validity of the Somali perspective ... rather that the US perspective was right, and that the US was right in being supportive of democracy and any group that opposed anything that was very Muslim.

The Somali tried to make the point that neither the Muslim Jihadists nor the Ethiopians nor any of the externally funded groups had any local legitimacy and that, more than anything else, the local Somali leaders and people wanted a way for their own legitimate leaders to be in power.

This is what has been successful in Somaliland.

This is what Michael Van Notten showed me when I was working in the area some years ago.

As I listened to the PBS program, I was struck by the totalitarian character of the US policy towards developing countries and democracy ... and reminded over and over again of the work Michael Van Notten had done in compiling information about the Somali legal system ... a system that predates the US system of law by hundreds of years!

When we want to look for the cause of violence in many places around the world ... we must in large part look to ourselves. Sad.

Monday, April 7, 2008

There is a critical need for dialog. Dialog is needed at all levels ... and not merely photo-op dialog by leaders ... and not television news sound bytes ... and not just documentaries that inform about crisis ... but something quite different. True dialog is needed, with two way debate ... with dialog where people of different opinions, of different views share perspectives, share experience and share hopes and dreams.

Dialog is best when it is about sharing, and not about winning. But there are far too few possibilities for a sharing dialog ... rather the opportunities are to be a passive recipient of a point of view with little or no possibility to participate in any meaningful way ... no real chance to be a part of a solution, even in the most modest way.

This is not how society needs to work ... especially a democratic society where every person's opinion is meant to count ... but successful society does work this way, and it is borne out by global experience.

Nations and nationalism have a poor history of peace and tranquility ... more the history is of war and conquest and then the reality of destruction and displacement and refugees. And in the long term the issues of resentment and revenge.

Nations and the people need to talk ... about common problems and common dreams and possibilities. There needs to be talk about what we can do together in peace ... and a need to talk about issues that are the cause of resentment and might turn into revenge and violence.

People have more in common than there are differences ... but where is this in the public dialog. It certainly does not feature much in the mainstream media ... and it is not being popularized by many of the groups that are in the news. But people all over the world are coming together in spite big differences that in another era would rarely have been possible ... and the global society is the better for it.

But violence is everywhere ... WHY?

There needs to be dialog so that we can explore WHY. This is being encouraged by the Center for Conflict in New York, and many other groups ... and Tr-Ac-Net is very supportive of these initiatives. In fact, Tr-Ac-Net wants to go a step further and to help make dialog not only something that happens locally, but also in many different ways between geographically diverse communities, as well as other forms of diversity whether religious, ethnic, national origin ... whatever. We all share the same planet ... and life ought to be rich and rewarding for all.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The following IRIN article was circulated by some colleagues working to control the violence in Kenya. When I saw the article, my initial impression was that it was superficial and missed the key root causes of the present violence. If you don't understand the problem, then it is going to be difficult to fix it.

NAIROBI, 9 January 2008 (IRIN) - The wave of violence that engulfed Kenya after the presidential election has been widely described as tribal or ethnic in nature. But analysts in the east African country point to basic economics as the true cause of the unrest. Widespread violence and a humanitarian crisis were triggered by the 30 December announcement that incumbent Mwai Kibaki had won a hotly contested presidential poll amid opposition claims of rigging and international observers’ reports of serious irregularities in the vote-tallying process.

“In the urban areas, there was a lot of senseless burning and looting, which was people taking out their economic grievances during a leadership vacuum. They just let loose and attacked any targets, burning their neighbours’ houses, regardless of whether they are PNU [Party of National Unity, Kibaki’s party] or ODM [Orange Democratic Movement, the opposition],” Macharia Gaitho, a political columnist, told IRIN. While specific ethnic groups - there are more than 40 in Kenya - were targeted during the violence, the tensions that led to such clashes were not the result of ethnicity per se, but, according an editorial in the Sunday Nation newspaper, an almost inevitable consequence of the country’s economic system: “Kenya practises a brutal, inhuman brand of capitalism that encourages a fierce competition for survival, wealth and power. Those who can’t compete successfully are allowed to live like animals in slums.”

Inequality pervasiveIn Nairobi, more than 60 percent of the population live in slums, some of which lie a stone’s throw away from the city’s most luxurious houses. According to a report (Pulling Apart: Facts and Figures on Inequality in Kenya) by the Nairobi-based Society for International Development (SID), Kenya is the 10th most unequal country in the world in terms of wealth disparities. Of Africa’s 54 states, it is the fifth most unequal. The 2004 report, using UN Development Programme figures, states that Kenya’s richest earn 56 times more than its poorest: the top 10 percent of the population controls 42 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 10 percent own 0.76 percent.

Inequality pervades every aspect of Kenyans’ lives, according to the report, citing enormous disparities - both in the capital and at national level - in almost every sphere of life: income; access to education, water and health; life expectancy; and prevalence of HIV/AIDS. A person born in the western Nyanza Province, the bedrock of ODM support, can expect to die 16 years younger than a fellow citizen in Central Province, Kibaki’s home turf. Child immunisation rates in Nyanza are less than half those in Central. Another impoverished region is North Eastern Province. While almost every child in Central attends primary school, only one in three does in North Eastern. More than nine out of every 10 women in North Eastern have no education at all. In Central, the proportion is less than 3 percent. In these two provinces, there is one doctor for 120,000 and 20,000 respectively.

Kibaki’s role

Critics of Kibaki, who came to power in 2002, accuse his government of failing to address this inequality and of focusing instead on the economic growth seen over the past five years. Before he came to power on a wave of euphoria and hope after 24 years of rule under the autocratic Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s growth stood at minus 1.6 percent. In 2007, it reached 5.5 percent and before the elections was predicted to hit 7 percent in 2008.

This growth has been concentrated in the service sector, with banks, tourism and communications companies making big profits. Prices of shares and property have also soared. But rather than trickling down to the worst off, this boom appears to have been very selective in its beneficiaries while the poor have seen the purchasing power of their shilling shrink.

Before Kibaki came to power, “we used to buy sugar for 45 shillings”, Agnes Naliaka, a long-term resident of Nairobi’s Kawangware slum, told IRIN. “Now it’s 65 shillings. A kilo of cooking fat was 50 shillings. Now it’s over 100 shillings,” she said, adding that rents in the slum had doubled over the past five years.

For David Ndii, executive director of the Kenya Leadership Institute, “the Kibaki government has been very cavalier about the treatment of the poor. Hawkers’ stalls were demolished and they were not given any alternatives. Economic policies have not been pro-poor. This growth has been biased in favour of profits as opposed to translated into jobs.” Fast growth When a poor economy starts to grow very fast like Kenya did, levels of inequality rise,”

MJ Gitau, a SID programme officer and contributor to the inequality report, told IRIN. “You need assets and property rights to participate in economic production and exchange. Only a few have assets, are educated, able to save and invest, to take advantage of the high growth rates of the last few years. Those who have, get more. Those who do not, lose the little they have,” Gitau explained.

Ethnicity came into play during the election violence because of the widespread perception that those who fared best under Kibaki were his own Kikuyu group, the country’s largest, which dominated politics and the economy both under his administration and that of founding president Jomo Kenyatta. However, Kibaki’s party says poverty levels have fallen from 56 to 46 percent, lifting some two million people out of abject poverty, and that more than 1.8 million jobs were created during his first five-year term. “Our country is shining once again and I have ever bigger plans for the development of the country during my second term. We are changing people’s lives for the better,” Kibaki declared two weeks before polling day.

That is not how many Kenyans see it. “People reacted like they did because they were hoping for change [after the 2002 election]. Kibaki came and promised many things which he didn’t do,” said Agnes of Kawangware slum. Let down Kenya’s youth in particular, who make up a majority of the population - and of those who rioted - feel the most let down. Improved education gave them hope of a better life than their parents’, hope that was dashed, according to Kwamchetsi Makokha of Nairobi-based communications consultancy Form and Content. “Under colonialism, it was almost a slave labour system which grew up in the early days of the coffee estates. After independence [in 1963], the white master was simply replaced by the black master.

A lot of young people who got a bit of education could not see themselves working for pittances as farm labourers. They started drifting to the cities where the opportunities are not enough to accommodate all of them. You have this massive influx of people who just can’t find work,” he told IRIN. Nor can they find a political voice, he added. “The common Kenyan citizen who does not have money or property does not have a say in how Kenya is organised. They never have. It’s always been about what car you drive, where you live, and then you have more rights than other people.”

Another ingredient in this combustible mix is corruption, which Kibaki pledged to eradicate but which under his rule, according to analyst and author Gerard Prunier, “reached new heights, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years”.

Observers hope that the explosion of anger and violence Kenya has witnessed over the past week will shake the country’s political leaders into resolving not only the row over who won the election and how power should be shared but also the country’s deep inequalities. “If anything positive is to come out of this electoral stalemate and the criminal destruction that has visited it, one hopes it will have served as a wake-up call to all Kenyans that the yawning gap between the middle class and the poor is a powder keg just waiting to explode with the most grave consequence,” warned columnist Washington Akumu in the Nation.

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My response to seeing this article was as follows:

Dear Colleagues

This IRIN article is quite good ... but it does not go into any depth about why a successful (???) economy has put Kibaki into a weak political position and generated so much disappointment and anger. Frankly, the article is very superficial ... typical of most of the international reporting that has emerged about Africa for most of the past 40 years ... and data that has flowed through the official relief and development community.

The issue of corruption was only mentioned in passing as something of an afterthought:"Another ingredient in this combustible mix is corruption, which Kibaki pledged to eradicate but which under his rule, according to analyst and author Gerard Prunier, 'reached new heights, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years'."

It would have been interesting to follow this up ... but doing followup on corruption in high places in Kenya is not safe. John Gitongho who was President Kibaki's lead on corruption had to leave the country for his safety and that of his family. One of my colleagues in anotherpart of Africa was assassinated as he pursued misappropriated fundflows. The world needs to know much more about the people in Kenya behind making John Gitongho a target of (very real) death threats.

There are indications that it is not just the head of the political party and apparatus that is the problem, but a whole gang of others in the hierarchy. Essentially the system works like an organized crime syndicate ... with a requirement to deliver wealth to the bosses. Kibaki tried to break out of this system and failed ... but it is not clear exactly why he failed ... though the answer is probably in the circle of Ministers that surrounded him.

The key number that the world should be looking for is the economic value of being the political party on power ... it is likely that the"rip-off" for the winners is in the $billions ... and shared only by the elite with rather little dropping down through the economy to the working poor and youth. President Moi was an expert and became a substantial owner, it is reported, in more than 2,000 corporate entities.

How is so much rip-off possible? One starting point is fund flows thatthe political leadership controls because funds are paid to the government. Another are the fund flows associated with the corporate community, both local and international that gets favors while political leadership gets money.

The Kenyan economy started to improve under Kibaki ... but the improvement was hijacked by some of the government leaders and insiders. Exactly what happened is difficult to understand ... but the fact that something nasty existed is evidenced by John Gitongho'sinability to complete the work he had started.

There is also a lot of history that needs to be understood as well. I wish I knew the details. The tribe is still important, and I would argue a positive value most of the time. The anger might end up appearing like a tribal anger ... but I would contend that in fact almost all the mess can be attributed to the corrupt practices of the political and government system ... something that also gets used to the benefit of the international community who also need to look hard at what they do in the "normal" course of business.

The way forward is to encourage a community centric economy where profit and social good can co-exist ... for government to be merely an institution that ensures that the society follows reasonable rules that optimize the quality of life ... and not ripping off the society at every turn. This is what democracy was designed to be in ancient Greece ... but is no more. The efforts within the Pyramid of Peace ...the Peace Acrobats ... others standing up for what is right ...peacefully. But there needs to be a community centric economy with community investment, community jobs, community peace and community progress.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Bennazir Bhutto was assassinated at a political rally in Pakistan as she was campaigning for the upcoming elections to be held in January. Why?

She was campaigning with "democracy" in the forefront of her popularity ... but is the democracy real, or is it merely political packaging that gets support and gets votes, but has little substance.

The United States seems to like politicians around the world that talk about democracy ... and it would appear that a lot of these politicians get more or less substantial financial assistance from the United States. This, I would argue, is a questionable practice and quite problematic.

Why do people run for high office? The ideal is that they are highly competent and are able to do something of value for the people ... but the reality is that there are substantial financial rewards available, and tremendous power.

Why do people get into violence during political campaigns and about the results of elections? It seems that too much money and power is associated with the political system, and the "goodies" that a political winner is able to share with supporters.

Money and power in politics is rarely value adding ... more often it is disastrous value destruction. There needs to be wealth creation from good economic activity ... and a big downgrading of political wheeling and dealing to divert wealth to partisan benefit.

What can be done to get peace ... so that there can be positive economic activity and opportunity for enterprise to generate incremental prosperity. Part of the answer is for a substantial improvement in the sharing of data about economic activities and how resources flows are being used for society's benefit. When people understand how much resources are being used for so little, they can make decisions about how to make changes. This was, I was taught in my youth, part of the responsibility of a free press ... but sadly, this sort of journalism is largely absent today.

Peter Burgess

About Me

Read engineering and economics at Cambridge ... qualified as a Chartered Accountant ... professional and corporate management working on management information and metrics of performance. International assignments as CFO and then as consultant to World Bank and UN agencies in connection with development projects and emergency situations. Work on planning at the national, area, sector and community level. Appalled at the current state of financial reporting in the corporate world and the metrics that drive major decisions in both the corporate and political sphere! The development of Community Analytics (CA) is a response to the need for better metrics than merely money accounting ... the concept of value should be treated with equal rigor and sophistication!